Aix-Marseille Université, LPC, and CNRS, Marseille, France,
Aix-Marseille Université, LPC, and CNRS, Marseille, France.
Gerontology. 2019;65(6):649-658. doi: 10.1159/000500673. Epub 2019 Jul 22.
Older adults improve their cognitive performance on a target task after succeeding in a prior task. We tested whether effects of prior-task success occur via changing older adults' ability to select the better strategy and/or to execute strategies efficiently.
Young and older participants (n = 162) accomplished a computational estimation task (i.e., providing the best estimates to arithmetic problems) after accomplishing a dot comparison task.
Both groups increased their performance on computational estimation following success on dot comparison. Older adults improved most and outperformed young adults following prior-task success. Prior-task success led older adults to select the better strategy more often and to repeat (or not) the same strategy more often when it was appropriate. Better strategy use mediated effects of prior-task success. Individual differences in baseline performance moderated individuals' sensitivity to effects of prior-task success.
Our findings further our understanding of mechanisms underlying effects of prior-task success and provide new perspectives on how social environment modulates age-related differences in cognitive performance.
老年人在成功完成先前任务后，其在目标任务上的认知表现会得到提升。我们测试了先前任务成功是否通过改变老年人选择更好策略的能力和/或有效地执行策略来产生影响。
年轻和老年参与者（n = 162）在完成点比较任务后完成了计算估计任务（即，对算术问题提供最佳估计）。
两组在点比较成功后，计算估计的表现都有所提高。与年轻人相比，老年人在先前任务成功后提高最多，并表现更好。先前任务的成功使老年人更频繁地选择更好的策略，并在适当的时候更频繁地重复（或不重复）相同的策略。更好的策略使用中介了先前任务成功的影响。基线表现的个体差异调节了个体对先前任务成功影响的敏感性。
我们的发现进一步加深了我们对先前任务成功影响背后机制的理解，并为社会环境如何调节认知表现的年龄相关差异提供了新的视角。
